Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/32

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN plumber; and in "Freaks" I did a bombastic charlatan. The type system, whereby an actor or actress is condemned for life to play only the sort of character which he or she has first done conspicuously well, was not yet in vogue. Versatility was the first demand of the theater; without it one was not an actor.

A few of the heroic roles, such as "Othello" and "Hamlet", were thought a bit beyond the range of the ordinary actor, but with such exceptions every player in his or her time ran the gamut from blank verse to low comedy.

As Blanche Bates was told at the outset of her career by her mother, "An actress should be able to play Topsy or Lady Macbeth equally well. It is not how she looks, but what she makes the audience think and feel." They were, as a result, better actors, man for man and woman for woman, than the products of to-day's specialization. Or such is my opinion.

My money lasted me four years. The second year of the Criterion Company I attained twenty-one and got my hands upon all of it. The faster we lost money, the more lavish Gosche and I grew. In the third year we scuttled the Criterion Company and organized the Gosche-Hopper Company with Georgie Drew